


The Wicked and The Wild

by zeffyamethyst



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 18:44:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2743187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeffyamethyst/pseuds/zeffyamethyst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New York is a wicked and wild city, and so is Tony Stark. </p><p>Also known as the <i>Avengers/Rivers of London</i> Fusion fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wicked and The Wild

**Author's Note:**

> Came about due to wondering "what if the Red Room trained night witches" and it grew from there. I have a lot more in my head than what's here, so if you have questions, just lemme know.

_"She has become a wicked and wild bitch in her old age has Manhattan, but there is still no sensation in the world quite like walking her sidewalks. Great surges of energy sweep all around you; the air fizzes like champagne, while always there is a nervous edge of fear and whispered distant promises of sudden violence."_

\- Tom Davies (1979)

 

\+ + +

 

"The world is changing, Stark," Fury says.

Tony rolls his eyes and rubs his neck. Goddamn night witches and their stabbiness.

“No fucking shit,” he replies. Even while he had been dying (Christ, never doing that again), he hadn't been able to ignore the magic leeching back into the world, like a breath of fresh air. Fresh, cold, winter air. He drops his hand to a bottle of…okay, he can’t actually read Polish. He was going to get around to learning it one day and one day just never came. He sniffs. “I think this is vodka."

"Stark!" Fury barks.

"Jesus, Fury. Keep your panties un-knotted." Tony sighs and licks at the lip of the bottle. Yep. Vodka. "So I have this fuck awful suspicion that I’m going to have to stop drinking the centuries away and actually pay attention. Now that I'm not dying and shit.”  

"You think?" Fury asks. For a human, he’s a mouthy little shit.

Because Tony is a benevolent and kind creature of pure magic, he doesn’t throw a little spark Fury’s way. “And I suppose I should go back to the East Coast,” he continues.

Fury’s smirk makes Tony want to rethink his kind and benevolent decision. Maybe a little spark would go a long way. “The spirit of New York, making his triumphant return.”

"God," Tony corrects. "Technically speaking, and SHIELD is all about technicalities, I’m a god, small ‘g’."

"I think we can let technicalities slide on this one."  

 

\+ + +

 

“So, you're a night witch!"

What better time to annoy your badass murder-y Russian witch than when you're stuck in a metal cage with her, flying several thousand feet above the world? Never let it be said that Tony pays any attention to his survival instincts.

"Did not peg you for one, I gotta admit," Tony continues, tossing a peanut into his mouth. "How'd you do it? I've never seen anyone mask their _signare_ the way you did."

Natalie—Natasha with red, red hair as dark as blood, smiles and Tony shuffles down a little further down the couch. He’s near immortal, not stupid. She flicks her hand and a knife appears between her fingers, another flick and it’s gone. Nifty little spell. Tony can taste her _signare_ , her magic, in the space between them now that she's not trying so hard to hide it. It’s the cloying sweet smell of decaying roses and the snarl of a starving wolf. _There are wolves in the night_ , Tony remembers, a story that someone had told him long ago. _And wolves and girls have sharp teeth_.

"Trade secret," she says. "How did you stop dying?"  

"Oh, we're doing this now? Tit for tat. Okay, okay, I can roll with that. Um, also trade secret but I will be nicer than you and say that I created a whole new element to do it. That thing you injected me with, how'd you know that would work?”

"The Red Room had a special interests _genii locorum_ ,” Natasha says, “How to utilise them, drain them, dispose of them. SHIELD confiscated their research back in the 1980s.”

It’s either an outright threat or a really subtle warning. Both, maybe. Probably. SHIELD had been largely uninterested in him when he was in Malibu and drinking enough to kill men half his biological age and three times his size. Obviously New York had been just fine without him and Tony could see why SHIELD might have chosen to let sleeping dogs lie. But things had changed, evidently.

"Well, if you do decide to kill me, promise my replacement won’t be some hipster do-gooder in skinny jeans and a fedora," Tony says and pours another drink for himself: scotch filled to the brim.

"Promises are for children, Stark," Natasha says, then refuses to elaborate.

 

\+ + +

 

Tony sleeps his way through the shitshow that was The Hulk vs Harlem.

He wishes he were joking. He spends three months asleep, recovering from the whole nearly dying debacle. It had been hard on his body, dealing with the poison while being so far away from his city, and finally given the chance it had shut down. He left Pepper in charge, told Rhodey not to get himself blown up and hibernated.

When he wakes up, Harlem’s broken and he’s got Ross up his city’s arse yelling about green rage monsters. It’s not the worst thing he’s ever woken up to, but it’s close.

"Why haven’t you fixed this?" he demands once he’s found Fury’s number in his phone and had enough coffee to feel moderately awake.

"It’s your city, Stark," is the reply.

"Its your…general," Tony counters weakly.

"You have a point," Fury agrees, which should have been all the warning Tony needs. "Let’s help each other out."

Long story short, Tony gets to piss off Ross and he gets a Hulk in the bargain.

The Hulk is the result of a complete clusterfuck of spells and biochemistry, and Tony could spend years trying to unravel the whole thing. The notes they recover from Culver University makes Tony think Banner was basing his experiment on the Werewolves the SS employed back during the war. The bit with the gamma rays are a bit unusual, but then Tony remembers the vita-rays from Project Rebirth. Werewolves and super soldiers, oh my. Tony copies some of the data and sends them off to trusted individuals around the world. He knows his limits and biochemistry is well beyond them.

 

\+ + +

 

"We've found Captain America," Coulson—Agent, tells him.

For some reason SHIELD seems to think Agent can keep Tony in check and have appointed him SHIELD's liaison to Stark Industry. Pepper thinks he'll be good for Tony but Pepper is a river spirit and not to be trusted.

"That's nice," Tony says and tries to fit a flamethrower into the Mark IV. Some near immortal spirits dabble in politics as a way to pass the time, others invent Fuck Off robots.

"He's alive," Coulson continues.

"Great."

"We were hoping--" says Coulson.

"Let’s not and say we did," Tony interrupts. "Let’s say you put the two of us in the one tiny little room. Let’s say there’s an argument about who owns New York. Let’s say things explode."

"That won’t happen."

"Really? You can guarantee that? Cos he was born in Brooklyn and whatever the fuck happened to him, happened in this city. You think he won’t have roots in this place? A claim to this city that I’m not willing to entertain because New York was mine first?"

Agent is quiet for a while, then he says, “Thank you for your time, Mister Stark.”

 

\+ + +

 

Thor is not a _genius locus_ and he is not a god. Tony has no idea what he is. He does pack one hell of a punch though.

 

\+ + +

 

Technically speaking, Captain America is a failed experiment. They had tried to artificially create a _genius locus_ , the personification of America, imbued with all the magical energy they could generate. Took out an entire city block’s worth of electricity. Tony felt it all the way over in Europe.

Didn’t quite work because you can’t create a minor god with some nifty injections and one hell of a magic shock, but they did get a guy who can punch his way through a brick wall. According to all the experts _genii locorum_ draw their power from their tributaries, whether it’s a river, a city or a forest. No one could quite figure out where Captain America draws his from. Tony has theories about that.

For reasons to do with luck and fucking Ettersburg, Tony and Captain America never got to meet face to face. But goddamn did Tony get to hear about the brand spanking new super soldier, who was golden and perfect and tall and smelled like sunshine and roses. Nobody ever told Tony he was such an ass.

"…Take all that away and what are you?" Captain America is demanding.

"The real deal," Tony returns, and watches his words hit the guy like a freight train. Then, because he’s not above kicking a man when he’s down, "Everything special about you came out of a bottle, but me? I was here before the Bill of Rights was a gleam in America’s eyes, buddy. I got my powers fair and square, how ‘bout you?"

For a moment, Tony thinks Captain America is going to haul off and punch him. Braces himself for it, actually.

And then Loki happens.

 

\+ + +

 

Loki is also not a _genius locus_. Or a wizard. Or any kind of creature that belongs on Earth or related parallel dimensions.

Loki is a dickbag in a class of his own who invites a fae army to invade Tony’s city.

He also kills Agen--Coulson. It's a secret among the _genius locus_ that they can feel every death in their cities. The first death is like a punch to the chest and so are the subsequent ten if Tony's being honest, but after a while you learn to shut it out. A couple of hundred years and it's a small sting. This one though, this one hurts as much as that first one.

Total. Dickbag.

 

\+ + +

 

Tony isn’t like other spirits because New York isn’t like other cities. New York is iron and industry, it’s heat and rebellion and a thousand small empires built on the blood of its people. The rivers of London fight with water, and the streets of Rome fight with earth. Tony, he fights with iron. The city clothes him in her best and finest metals, in hues of red and gold. He flies above her and through her and rains hell down on her enemies.

Below him, Natasha is a slip of a shadow, there one moment and gone the next, leaving behind a trail of fae bodies already fading to dust. Tony had heard that night witches are battle witches, the big fat human nukes you drop when you want cities obliterated. Natasha is the opposite. She is the surgical strike with hands full of _fulmen_ , maximum damage and minimum energy.

A roar pulls Tony’s attention to the south-west corner where Banner’s all Hulked out and every punch is magic in its purest form. Even flying up this high, Tony can feel his _signare_ ; a hot desert wind and spices Tony doesn’t know the names of. Above him, on one of the rooftops, Barton’s crouched letting loose arrow after arrow at a gaggle of gargoyles. Unlike the others, Barton’s human as all get out, but he’s making the faes work for it. Good for him.

Up in the highest building the city has to offer, Thor seems to be enjoying himself, throwing thunder everywhere. Thor doesn't have a _signare_ , not the way Tony thinks of it, but he smells crisp ozone when he flies near and that's close enough.

And then there’s Captain America, throwing that shield in physics defying ways and jumping impossibly high to grab onto gargoyle feet. He’s pure magic too, but not like Tony and not like Banner. He pulls his magic from the people around him, from their faith and their hopes. If there exists a _genius loci_ of the people, Tony thinks Captain America might be it.

Tony drops down to bounce a spell off the shield and catches a whiff of Cap’s _signare_. Goddamit, he really does smell like sunshine and apple pie.

 

\+ + +

 

A nuke. A motherfucking goddamn nuke aimed at his city. Tony and Fury are going to have words when this is over. Or, y'know, maybe not because well--

"That's a one way trip, Stark," he hears Cap say. Comm pieces that combine magic and technology and doesn't fall to pieces at the slightest  _lumos._ One of his best, and apparently last, inventions. 

"Yep," Tony says, popping the 'p' as obnoxiously as he can. 

The city knows what he's going to do. He can feel it reaching out for him, trying to wrap him in her magic. Protection, farewell, fear, desperation. He doesn't have the energy to calm her, not when he's spending what little he has left on racing the nuke to the gateway. He's going to die and the city will--okay, the city will survive because that's what they do. The city will find another spirit, another lonely lost kid who died in snow because he'd been stupid enough to run away from his dad on the coldest night of winter. 

"Sir, shall I try Ms. Potts?" JARVIS offers. 

Tony starts to say, "no" but changes his mind halfway. "Might as well." 

He needs to tell her about the contingency plan he came up with a few decades back, just after Pearl Harbor but before America became embroiled in the war. Needs to tell her how to keep the city intact and prevent a civil war in his absence. He's seen what happened to cities that have lost their avatars so suddenly, the power vacuum that leads to war, and his city, his love, deserves more than that. He needs to tell her she made the centuries less lonely, more bearable. He needs to thank her. He needs to say goodbye. 

The phone is still ringing when the nuke explodes.

 _They better close the damn portal_ , is the last thought he has.

His team--and isn't that a weird thought--does him one better. They close the portal and they stop him from becoming a smear on the ground. 

 

\+ + +

 

"How’re we explaining this away?" Tony asks Fury later, over the phone because he’s not leaving New York any time soon. This is after schwarma, which was excellent, and after the apologies, which was not as excellent but necessary.

"Terrorists," Fury says succinctly.  

"Well, shoulda guessed that. And which country are we blaming?" Tony asks. "Afghanistan still out of favour? Or is it Russians these days?"

"Don’t you worry about that, Stark. Focus on your city."

That evening, Tony finds himself standing on top of Stark Tower, looking down on his city, which is still bustling with life despite the invasion. He wriggles his toes, luxuriating in the energy of the city coming up through the tower and filling him with golden warmth.

He closes his eyes and focuses on that energy, finding and smoothing out the snags in its pattern. The city is a little sluggish in its response, understandable after the battle and after decades without Tony’s presence within its boundaries. When it wakes up though, it wakes up with a surge of magic so sudden, so warm it takes Tony’s breath away. He’s reminded of a mid-summer heatwave, of the steady heat of newly welded iron. Tony lets it sweep through him and when the city is done rubbing up against him like an affectionate cat, he goes back to finding the dark spots that require a little tweak. He thinks of it like finding bad codes and rewriting. Mama Thames, whom Tony has met only the once and that was enough thank you, said it was like fixing a fishing net. Different strokes for different folks, Tony supposes.

He’s not sure how long he stands there but he knows the exact moment Steve Rogers steps into his building.

"Sorry to interrupt sir, but Captain Rogers was wondering if he could talk to you," JARVIS says a moment later.

Cute. Rogers didn’t have to announce himself, there’s no such agreement between the two of them, but he’s a polite Brooklyn boy, isn’t he?

Tony gestures at the nearest camera. “Sure, whatever.”

He’s stepped inside and is sipping on a nice measure of scotch by the time Rogers rushes out of the lift like his tail’s on fire.

"I felt you," Rogers says the moment he sees Tony. He comes to a sudden stop a few feet away from Tony and Tony gets the feeling it’s meant to be a gesture of respect or something. He’s staring at Tony with wide, wondering eyes, lips half-parted as he takes gasping breaths, and Tony has to stifle the urge to hide behind something. People shouldn’t look at other people like that.

"Hello, Rogers," Tony says, dragging up a smirk from somewhere.

"That was—That was you, right? Before?" Rogers demands. "I was in Central Park and I could feel you—it was amazing.”

Oh, God. Tony eyes the flush on Rogers’ cheeks, the slightly dilated pupils and the mild scent of freshly baked apple pie that he suspects is coming from Rogers. He’s seen this before. Magic euphoria is what the textbooks call it. Drunk on magic jungle juice is Tony’s name for the whole thing.

“You’re amazing,” Rogers says, breathes the word, really. There are stars in his eyes, not literal, thank God but Tony is starting to get worried. He hasn’t seen anyone get that high off magic since…oh, right, Rogers has a link to this city. Enough of one to be sensitive to what Tony was doing. Tony doesn’t know for sure but he imagines it’s probably like someone stroking him on the inside, finding all the knots and massaging them out.

Tony feels a little dirty, which is a new experience for him.

"J, remind me to be more subtle next time," Tony orders.

"The dictionary definition of subtle or your own, sir?"

"Shut up, JARVIS."

So this is Tony’s life now, dealing with a drunk Captain America who looks half a bad idea away from rubbing his face on Tony’s arm. Captain America Catnip.

"All right, cap, let's go sleep it off. You'll regret this in the morning."

It's unnerving, how easily Captain America acquiesces to Tony's order. He all but melts the minute Tony touches his shoulder and lets himself be guided down the hallway to the guest room. All the while, he stares at Tony like he's the center of the world.

 

\+ + +

 

"Oh, God. I’m so sorry. That was completely inappropriate." And that would be a mortified Steve Rogers standing in the middle Tony’s kitchen. Tony bets if he could, he’d be clutching a hat in his hand.  

Tony wonders what a magic hangover is like. Awesome, probably.

"Okay," Tony says loudly before Rogers can get any further. "I’ve thought about it long and hard and I’m going to write up an agreement for us. Number one is: everything that happened before now is tabula rasa."

"I don’t think that’s how you use it in a sentence."

Tony waves his objection away. “Two, you can’t have two genii loci of a city but I suppose you can have Broooklyn.”

"I don’t want—"

"Sure you do. Three…okay, I’ll come up with three later. How about it, Rogers? Truce?"

Rogers opens his mouth, nothing comes out. He tries again, and again nothing.

"Work with me here," Tony says impatiently.

After a long moment during which a roomba affectionately bumps against Rogers’ foot, Rogers says, “Okay. But only if you call me Steve. It’s—we should be friends.”

Friends. Tony sighs. “Fine, I suppose.” Then because he can’t help himself, he adds, “And sorry for badtouching you with magic.”

Rog—Steve goes a lovely, bright red.

It's the start of a beautiful friendship, if Tony has any say in it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> originally found on my [tumblr](http://syncytio.tumblr.com/post/103026020657/so-ive-just-finished-reading-foxglove-summer-and)


End file.
